


take me home where i belong

by cosmicallycatastrophic



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: A collection of moments, Canon Backstory, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pre-Canon, home doesnt have to be a place TM, i guess, i wish id put more fluff in it because they deserve a lot of sweet moments but, ronsey was real and i dont care, summer boys who love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 01:40:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9469763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallycatastrophic/pseuds/cosmicallycatastrophic
Summary: HOME[noun]1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.2. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.3. any place of residence or refuge.





	

**Author's Note:**

> a collection of moments between ronan and gansey pre-canon, because they were in love and you cant tell me otherwise. most of these are pre-niall death too so ronan has long hair !! bless !! also helen is a vegetarian because shes a lesbian im not sorry. they are Kind Of in chronological order; the timeline might be a bit of a mess but i dont really care. no beta We Die Like Men. hit me up on tumblr at greedismyservant! (title from runaway by aurora because it's a song about ronan lynch)

They are sixteen, and they are kings.

They lie in their hay bale kingdom, cradled by shoulder-height grass that tickles when they turn their heads to look at each other, which they so often do. Their hands tangle together, bridging the gap between them.

Ronan breathes in deep, the smell of Gansey, mint and sun cream (though he doesn’t need it; Gansey would never do something as ordinary as _burn_ \- he bronzes). He feels still the way he does only when he’s with Gansey. The sun melts down his face and he smiles. His heart beats a hummingbird rhythm behind his ribs.

He rolls over, feels blades of grass kiss his elbows, pulls up just short of Gansey’s face. Gansey lifts his free hand, strokes over Ronan’s cheek just barely, and Ronan lets his eyes slide shut for a second. He knows his mouth is turning up. He knows he’s happy. He opens his eyes and the boy below him smiles an earth-shattering grin, nose scrunched up, eyes squinted against the sun. He’s golden, they’re both golden, and Ronan sets himself to rest on Gansey’s shoulder, head in the crook of his neck.

Ronan drops kisses along Gansey’s jaw, smells him fiercely and closely, feels Gansey’s hair tickle his cheek; it’s growing out, soft and floppy and the colour of Manuka honey. Gansey drapes his arm across Ronan’s side and they lie like that, together. Ronan’s breaths are even and deep and he can feel Gansey’s chest moving. The calm spreads from his throat downwards, like treacle. Gansey noses into Ronan’s hair. His voice is hushed, reverent.

“You smell nice. Like- I’m not sure. Smoke. And lemons. Do you use lemon shower gel?”

Ronan shakes his head, just to feel his hair slide across Gansey’s neck.

They are sixteen, and they are kings, and Ronan doesn’t understand how so much happiness can live inside him like this, and he wouldn’t change it for the world.

*

This is how it happened, six months ago:

There were in the kitchen at the Barns, swathed in the smell of boxwood and Aurora Lynch’s cooking. Gansey was laughing about something, anything, full-body laughing and Ronan felt his laughter like honey rushing through him, and when Gansey came down from it, Ronan was tongue-tied. Gansey’s eyes were glowing and crinkled and his mouth was turned up, perfect, the most beautiful painting come to life. Ronan’s heart seized. Gansey looked at him like he was an answer. They both knew.

Gansey whispered _Ronan_ like it meant _thank you_.

The kiss was slow and soft and everything it should be for two teenage boys who love bigger than their bodies.

Ronan was smiling for hours afterwards. Something had clicked into place, and it felt like Gansey’s hand in his, so he didn’t let go.

*

“I have to do this. I have to _matter_.”

They are sat in a CVS parking lot and the dashboard lights blink _two oh seven AM_. Ronan feels something in his throat, ugly, choking. It feels like the thousand things he can’t say. He can’t say _you do matter_ or _you have always mattered_ or _you matter to me_. Because it’s true- they’re all true, and Ronan has inherited an inability to handle the truth from his father.

_I love you. I’m in love with you. I think I love you. You know I love you, right? I love you and I want to tell you more than anything, but we haven’t talked about this, and we don’t know what this is, and you mean too much to me._

It’s all true.

He has never felt this much of anything before. He wants to say it, feel it lifting a weight from his chest, but Ronan has never been good with words and he can’t let the first time be during a study in insomnia outside a drugstore.

So he sits, quietly, words clamouring in his head and trying to force their way out of his mouth. The only thing that comes out sounds small and strained.

“I know.” Because he does know. It’s a tailored truth, and it doesn’t hurt as much as the others.

Gansey glances at him, the street lamps backlighting him and making him glow. A king. A tired, tired king, eyes shrouded in dark circles, hair cut short and smart for his mother. Ronan liked it long, and wants it back so he can run his hands through it and pull at the curled ends. This Gansey, the one with a hundred dollar short back and sides, the charming young man, the model Gansey son, isn’t a Gansey who Ronan knows or understands. Right now his head is bowed and he rubs his hands systematically, feeling each knuckle. He looks wretched.

“You- you know.” He drags a hand over his face, tries to rub off his conflict and his longing; loss doesn’t become a king.

Ronan reaches for his hand across the gearstick. He strokes his thumb over Gansey’s knuckles, wants to feel useful, wants to stop his heart free-falling through his body.

“We’re going to find this king, Gansey. We’re going to find this _damn king_ if it kills me.”

The way Gansey looks at him then feels like a sucker punch. He breathes out slowly.

“Yeah. We are.”

*

Dinner at the Gansey mansion is a painful affair.

The food is nice enough, precise slices of cooked ham (Helen turns her nose up at this, stating with vehemence that she is a _vegetarian_ and _the caterers should have remembered, I sent them an email this morning!_ ) and steamed vegetables, dainty jugs of gravy and glasses of carefully chosen wine. The Ganseys themselves are nice enough too; they ask Ronan politely about his classes and his family ( _Does Declan have any plans for what he wants to do after school? Such a charming young man! I’m sure he has a head for politics-_ ), but something about the atmosphere makes Ronan miserable.

It might be the fact that Gansey had spent little under an hour helping Ronan get ready, kissing his skin before fastening each button on the stiffly pressed shirt, combing his hair and shaving him, cradling his face, intimate touching and care and gentle presses of lips to Ronan’s hairline and all over his face- and now they sit barely inches from each other and Ronan can’t even hold Gansey’s hand, knock his knee, whisper in his ear, kiss his cheek like he aches to. It hurts.

He can almost place it, at the end of the meal, when Richard Gansey the Second has had three glasses of his prestigious vintage and is now settling into a glass of Glen Grant 1936. He sits at the head of the table and beams down at where Ronan and Gansey Junior sit on one side. The Gansey seated next to Ronan is once again not the Gansey who Ronan knows- _loves_ \- or understands, but he’s flushed slightly with wine and looking a strange kind of tense that Ronan recognises. He wants to get out. He wants to be at the Barns, at Monmouth, in the library, anywhere, wants to be close to Ronan and touch him and feel the warmth of his skin, unavoidable, and Ronan wants that too; his hands itch with the thought of Gansey under them.

Richard Gansey the Second is talking about something, still remarkably articulate, and Ronan is dutifully not paying attention, until his Gansey joins the conversation and his attention turns.

“What makes you say that?” Gansey’s tone is not argumentative, never hostile, he sounds light and interested and Ronan envies him just a little bit, the way Gansey can engage with others even when he disagrees with them and hide his anger in a separate, secret place; Ronan knows that Gansey does not agree with whatever his father has said, but he stays conversational. He says _what makes you say that?_ where Ronan’s response would’ve been _fuck off and die_. So much anger lives inside Ronan, and it is like truth in the respect that he doesn’t know what to do with it. He is angry at Niall Lynch, angry at their secrets and their differences but more so at their similarities. He doesn’t want a life of secrets. He doesn’t want to be dangerous. He knows dreamers are weapons and that knowledge is stuck uncomfortably under his skin as a constant irrevocable reminder of what he is.

Gansey Senior’s response is pleasant, warm, alcohol-smoothed. He doesn’t know he’s said anything to upset his son.

“I think brotherhood is so important between you boys. Behind every great man is a great brother, and if you’re not born with one, you find one! I’m thrilled that you two have found each other.” He smiles, cheeks garishly rosy. Ronan feels the anger start like a switch has been flicked. It starts to boil. He glances at Gansey, whose smile is rigid.

 _Brothers? Fucking brothers?_ The anger is swirling with misery and he feels muddy and black inside. _Brothers_. A brother he’d die for and kill for and the only person who has ever made him want to share the most dangerous secrets in the world, a brother he has visceral and carnal knowledge of, a brother he loves like his heart on fire. A brother who makes him feel safe, known like none of his _real_ family members have managed to.

“Yes,” Gansey says, and his eyes scream _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry but you know I have to say this_ , “Ronan is like a brother to me.”

And later, when the other Ganseys are asleep in their thousand thread count sheets, and Ronan finally has his hands all over Gansey, he whispers low and rasping into Gansey’s ear “you’d let your brother touch you like this?”

Gansey groans a little, breathes out a _shut up_ , and Ronan smirks into their kiss.

*

Niall Lynch is dead. Murdered. Niall Lynch is dead.

Niall Lynch is dead and Ronan found the body.

Niall Lynch is dead.

Ronan kicks into Monmouth. Gansey is on his bed and he looks up and he knows something is wrong. Something is wrong. Niall Lynch is dead. Ronan can’t stop his tears and he doesn’t know why.

Ronan lies on the bed and doesn’t make a sound and looks up and thinks one thing over and over and over and over.

He feels something wet and stinging on his hands. Gansey is wiping off the blood but it keeps bubbling up. The tears keep running down his face. Gansey is saying something and he doesn’t hear it. Niall Lynch is dead.

Gansey climbs up to Ronan on the bed. He pulls Ronan’s shoulders up and sits behind him. He wraps his arms around Ronan’s middle. He whispers something over and over and over and over.

_I’m here, Ronan. I’m right here._

Niall Lynch is dead.

_I’m right here._

*

It is a month later. Ronan kicks into Monmouth in Niall’s old leather jacket and a ripped tank top and skin-tight jeans and iron-tipped boots.

He puts his plastic carrier bag on the side, takes out the orange juice and chugs almost half of it straight from the carton. The other thing he pulls from the bag is a packaged electric razor. He waves it at Gansey.

“It’s a fuck you,” he says, and heads into the bathroom, and Gansey follows.

Ronan sits in the bathtub in his boxers, runs his hands through his thick black hair, a _burden_ , a weight, and watches Gansey unpack the razor. He puts in batteries, flattens the cardboard box.

“Use it to make St Agnes,” Ronan says. Gansey nods.

He gets into the tub behind Ronan hesitantly. It’s been a while since they stopped sharing the easy touches they used to have. Gansey thinks Ronan will break if he touches him again. Ronan thinks he might too, but he still tugs at Gansey’s teal polo shirt.

“Gotta take this off, Dick, you’ll get hair on it.”

Gansey leans back and does as Ronan says, and Ronan can appreciate the way his arms have become more toned and defined and objectively ripped since he joined Crew, even if he can’t touch.

Ronan closes his eyes when he hears the razor buzz to life. He keeps them closed and feels his hair falling onto his shoulders and back, brushing his skin, stroking him goodbye. Gansey is careful, using one hand to hold Ronan’s head still. He rubs his thumb over the new patches of stubble. When the razor clicks off Ronan smiles. He stands up and he feels lighter. He thinks about phoenixes and rebirth.

He burned his old self to death with anger and this is the result. It’s a fuck you to the world, to God, to Niall Lynch for getting fucking _killed_ before he could explain anything to his son and not letting him go home where he feels safe.

He looks in the mirror. Gansey has done a good job; it’s even and smooth, and it feels like antler velvet. He looks powerful, stood in his black cotton underwear. He looks like a weapon.

“How does it look?” Ronan asks, sharp smile, soft eyes. He says it like it means _thank you_ , because it does.

Gansey smiles back at him.

“You look fantastically handsome.”

Ronan snorts, running his hands over his new head. It feels nice to be so close. It feels nice not to look like the old Ronan. It feels like he could throw brick through a window and deck anyone who got in his way, and it feels nice.

“You always say that.”

Gansey steps forward.

“That’s because it’s always true.”

They kiss, just for a moment, and Ronan lets himself put his arms around Gansey. Gansey holds Ronan’s head between his hands. He whispers “ _it suits you_ ” into Ronan’s mouth.

Ronan nods like it means _thank you_. He is not golden, he is not a king. He is a teenage boy and his father is dead. He holds onto Gansey’s bare skin and he realises, _it’s okay_.

Niall Lynch is dead, but Ronan is not alone.

 _I’m here, Ronan._ He’s right here.

Home doesn’t have to be a place.


End file.
